GREEN BAY, Wis. — Edge rusher Micah Parsons showed why the Green Bay Packers were willing to make him the highest-paid non-quarterback in NFL history.

Parsons, facing the Vikings for the first time as an NFC North opponent, had two of Green Bay’s five sacks as the Packers’ defense dominated in a 23-6 victory Sunday.

“They brought me here to pash rush,” Parsons said. “If a team wants to run 40 times a game, what’s your pass rusher supposed to do? All I do is keep the edge. If I can pass rush, I can affect the game.”

Parsons was acquired from Dallas just before the start of the regular season in a blockbuster trade for two first-round draft picks and defensive lineman Kenny Clark. Parsons was rewarded with a four-year $186 million deal worth $46.5 million per year.

Parsons’ presence was evident as Minnesota managed just 145 yards total offense, including 93 on the ground.

Under constant pressure, Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy completed 12 of 19 passes for 87 yards, no touchdowns and two interceptions with a passer rating of 34.2.

“Teams that are just going to run the ball, they’re trying to minimize the game. But guess what? We’re a really good defense. We have to find ways to stop the run and work as a team to put teams in a position where they can’t pass the ball.”

A critical special teams mistake put the Vikings in a position where they were forced to pass. Myles Price botched a punt on the first series of the third quarter; he called for a fair catch but didn’t catch it, then touched the ball on the rebound. The Packers recovered at the Minnesota 5-yard line. Two plays later, Emanuel Wilson scored on a one-yard run to put Green Bay in front 17-6.

“That punt was huge,” Parsons said. “Changed the whole momentum of the game. … I told the guys at halftime, ‘They had eight passes.’ Five were play-action, there was one true back when we got pressure, and two of them were screens. So I was like, ‘No one’s going to let us pass rush, we’ve got to go earn it.’ ”

McCarthy was sacked at least once on each of the Vikings’ next three possessions, including two by Parsons, followed by two interceptions.

“Back-to-back negatives are hard to overcome, especially against that group,” Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell said. “When you end up third-and-12, third-and-15, third-and-17, whatever we were, (it’s) not the formula in any way, shape or form.”

Once the Packers got the lead, that allowed the pass rushers to tee off, which made it easier for the secondary.

“We like playing with the lead because you get to let the big dogs eat,” said Packers cornerback Evan Williams, who had one of the Packers’ picks. “Being able to have those guys up front makes our job very easy.”

“We just get to our spots and cover whatever routes are through our zone,” Williams added. “You understand that the ball, if it comes out, it probably won’t be on time, might be wobbly in the air, hanging in the air, just because the quarterback’s got to think about those people off the edge.”

Parsons’ two sacks gave him a team-high 10 on the season. He had 52.5 sacks in four seasons with the Cowboys.

“I feel like 10 sacks for the standard of player you are. That should be the minimum you should get,” he said.

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The Vikings’ offensive performance on Sunday in Green Bay was the kind you’d see from a 3-12 team playing out the string in a pointless Week 17 tilt long after being eliminated from playoff contention.

Of a team that was on its backup quarterback and had its fanbase saying, “We have to get a better No. 2 next offseason so we don’t have to go through THIS again.”

Of a team that did not have any interest in opening up its playbook, and when it was finally forced to, you understood why.

Minnesota managed four total yards of offense in the second half of a 23-6 loss to Green Bay on Sunday. That number dips below zero if you include a five-yard loss on a false start infraction.

The second half drive chart:

— three and out

— three and out

— three and out

— Interception

— Interception

The offensive highlights of the final 30 minutes were sacks of J.J. McCarthy where the quarterback was ruled down at his own 1-yard line rather than them being ruled safeties.

The game was over the moment Minnesota went down multiple scores after a blunder by Myles Price on a punt return. The Vikings couldn’t block Packers star edge rusher Micah Parsons, or anyone else on Green Bay’s defensive front.

McCarthy isn’t nearly good enough at this juncture to operate the offense under the most optimal conditions, as proven last week in a 19-17 loss to Chicago wherein Minnesota played 58 minutes of putrid offense … at home … against one of the worst defenses in football.

When facing a good defense in a bad script? Forget it, it’s over.

It’s non-competitive.

Minnesota’s offense is an eyesore. Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell admitted postgame to reporters that his team’s margin for error is “razor thin” at the moment. The narrow path to victory he described sounded like a team hoping to milk the clock to shorten the game and win 13-10.

Never would you have thought this was possible in the O’Connell era. In the coach’s previous three seasons guiding the Vikings’ offense, Minnesota has ranked sixth, fifth and sixth in the NFL in passing yards. That includes a season in which Josh Dobbs, Nick Mullens and Jaren Hall took turns filling in after Kirk Cousins went down with a season-ending injury.

Minnesota is averaging 138 yards through the air in McCarthy’s six starts. On a day where they lost by three scores, the Vikings attempted only 19 passes, and even that somehow felt like too many.

There was never a guarantee Minnesota would always be good, but with O’Connell, Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison, the assumption was the Vikings would always be fun. Yet this neutered offense is currently one of the toughest watches in football.

It can be enjoyable to watch a youthful signal caller learn, develop and blossom, even amid growing pains. But this experiment is getting worse every week. O’Connell and McCarthy keep referring to mechanical changes the 22 year old is attempting to master and implement on the fly.

That process, frankly, feels impossible to complete midseason. It’s currently going about as poorly as you’d expect.

As a result, fans likely feel worse and worse about this team with each passing performance. And with playoff odds now sitting south of 5% after this latest loss, what’s the point of tuning in?

It’s certainly not for entertainment; there was none of that to be found on Sunday.

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Minnesota United at San Diego FC

What: Western Conference semifinal
When: 9 p.m. CT Monday
Where: Snapdragon Stadium
Stream: MLS Season Pass on Apple TV
Radio: KSTP-AM, 1500
Weather: 60 degrees, overcast, 4 mph south wind
Betting line: MNUFC plus-360; draw plus-320; San Diego minus-160

Format: The MLS Cup Playoffs have entered its one-game knockout rounds. Unlike the best-of-three, first-round series, if this match is tied after 90 minutes, a 30-minute extra time period will be played for a tie would go to penalty kicks.

Look-ahead: Monday’s winner will play Vancouver in the West final next weekend. The second-seed Whitecaps beat Los Angeles FC in penalty kicks on Saturday night. Top seed San Diego would host, while fourth-seed Minnesota would again go on the road.

Form: MNUFC outlasted Seattle Sounders in a wild Game 3 on Nov. 8, overcoming a two-goal deficit and Joseph Rosales’ red card to win in 10 rounds of penalty kicks.

View: The MLS schedule change (where in 2027, the season starts in fall, ends in spring) will hurt cold-weather clubs such as the Loons, but the flip will nullify the current playoff pause during international windows, which can suck momentum from the proceedings. The Loons were buzzing after the Seattle win, but there is a 15-day gap between matches.

Recent matchups: The Loons split its regular-season set against expansion franchise San Diego, losing 4-2 in St. Paul in June and winning 3-1 in San Diego in September. Both team lacked key players in June and Minnesota rode its luck in September as San Diego had an 2.2-0.7 advantage in expected goals.

Quote: “I don’t think anyone sees the game playing out distinctly differently to how it’s played out in the first two,” Ramsay said Friday. “They’re a team that will really dominate the ball, I would say (as) any team in MLS at the moment, so we know full well the things that we’ve done well (defensive organization, threat on transition and set plays) We have to do that to a really high level if we want to win the game.”

Stats: 66%. The amount of possession San Diego held in each of the regular-season matches against Minnesota. This was not a  shocking number. S.D. led the league with 60.8%, while Minnesota was dead least at 39.7.

Absences: Rosales (suspended) is out. The MLS availability report has not yet been released.

Key to the game: Unlike the West semifinal last year against L.A. Galaxy, the Loons need to keep this goal-less early — or, ideally, score their own goal. If high-flying San Diego scores early, Minnesota will have to chase an open-play goal and that is far from their strength. That would invite a blowout.

Scouting report: The head of the San Diego attack is Anders Dreyer. The Dane attacker has 36 combined goals and primary assists, which is behind only Lionel Messi (45) this season. Coming in from Anderlecht in Belgium, the 26 year old. MLS New comer of the year.

Prediction: Minnesota luck ran out at this stage a year ago and it’s hard to see how it will go beyond this point again in 2025. San Diego, 3-1.

Considering that St. Paul’s History Theatre has spent almost half a century examining Minnesota’s stories and presenting them onstage, it’s somewhat surprising that the company has never explored the 139-year-old St. Paul Winter Carnival.

That annual frozen festival was created to spark tourism during the state’s darkest months and stir locals from hibernation. It’s evolved over the years to include parades, ice palaces, sculptures fashioned from ice and snow, a medallion hunt, and a cosplay mythology about the battle between warmth and cold.

Having so much history with which to work, perhaps it’s no surprise that History Theatre’s “Rollicking! A Winter Carnival Musical” can’t seem to figure out where to place its focus. So it goes every which way, cherrypicking from a multitude of carnival-related subjects and tossing them together into a sort of scattershot fantasia, a collage of scenes and songs that are often entertaining, but never add up to anything resembling a story.

Roland Hawkins II, left, and Annika Isbell in the History Theatre’s premiere production of “Rollicking! A Winter Carnival Musical,” a fantasy built upon architect Cap Wigington and his wife being swept into the fantastical legend of King Boreas. It runs at History Theatre in St. Paul through Dec. 21, 2025. (Rick Spaulding / History Theatre)

So you’re likely to leave a performance of the inaptly titled “Rollicking!” unsatisfied, but fully ready to clean up if your neighborhood pub hosts a St. Paul Winter Carnival trivia contest. For the facts do come at you in fast and semi-furious fashion, often delivered by the anthropomorphic Hi-Lex drops of bleach that used to march in the Winter Carnival parades. They repeatedly interrupt the action to toss historical footnotes at the audience, adding to the feeling that this is the theatrical equivalent of channel surfing or scrolling on social media.

The production’s key saving grace is that composer Keith Hovis is clearly a talented songsmith. He’s created 18 songs in disparate styles, from bouncy pop to vintage Vaudeville splash and dazzle (with catchy choreography by Joey Miller) to booming belters a la Adele to a deliciously funky rebellion of the snow queens. So if you just enjoy “Rollicking!” as a carnival-flavored musical revue, you’ll probably be better off than those left trying to puzzle out this musical’s plot or central conflict.

Playwright Rachel Teagle seems to be constantly chasing after Hovis’s music in the vain hope of pinning some sort of story onto it. What she’s ended up with is early 20th-century architect “Cap” Wigington designing the 1937 ice palace – his first sung phrase is “find the line,” perhaps foreshadowing the playwright’s quandary in trying to pull a tale out of this mountain of facts – and being drawn into a kind of Oz or Narnia-like fantasy world where his quest is to… Hard to say, exactly. Hold his marriage together? Save the carnival from capitalist exploitation? It’s unclear.

Yet the cast of nine, director Laura Leffler and a quartet of musicians led by Isabella Dawis sell this material with plenty of energy and enthusiasm. Benjamin Dutcher and Randy Schmeling joyfully embrace the silliness of their roles as the key spokesmen on either side of the ice vs. fire debate. Adrienne Zimiga-January strikes a deft balance between clownishness and dignity in her roles. And Wigington and his wife Viola are given powerful voice by Roland Hawkins II and Erin Nicole Farste.

But “Rollicking!” eventually succumbs to the demands of trying to stuff too much history into a two-and-a-half-hour show, likely leaving even the most devoted Winter Carnival fans flummoxed.

‘Rollicking! A Winter Carnival Musical”

When: Through Dec. 21

Where: History Theatre, 30 E. 10th St., St. Paul

Tickets: $78-$30, available at 651-292-4323 or historytheatre.com

Capsule: An unfocused carnival collage.

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